Not just one of my favourite a capella songs, but also simply one of my favourite songs. Bobby McFerrin and the Circle Singers evoke ancient temple ruins amid moonlit dunes and exultant rituals performed in the dancing firelight.

Years after I first heard this song (and the brilliant album from which it comes) I still get goosebumps at around the 40 second mark when the bass voices join.

If you grew up in Australia in the 1980s (which I did), you would have been aware of a band called the Hunters And Collectors. They were known for having a raw energy coupled with the ability to write surprisingly sensitive and beautiful music.

If you lived in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s (which I did), you would also have been aware of an irreverent and talented comedy music trio called the Doug Anthony All Stars.

The above video is a live rendition of ‘Throw Your Arms Around Me’, perhaps the most sensual song written by the Hunters And Collectors, performed by the Doug Anthony All Stars for a charity benefit in 2003.

This music video may be very mildly NSFW (Not Suitable For Work), if your workplace has a policy about male bodybuilders in tiny underwear.

The Wisdom City workplace policy on this is that we will do our best not to mutter things like, “Yeah, but can they hold a conversation?” And, “I bet Mister Muscles couldn’t use a semicolon properly if his life depended on it.” And, “Look, I’d stand around in my underwear too if you’d turn off the lights and wear this blindfold and stay out of the room I’m in.”

Curious… I honestly never thought I’d be the type to develop a taste for Rockabilly music, and yet here I am, by way of a sort of fascination with the drawl and twang of Louisiana Swamp Rock. This is the remarkable Imelda May, with a bigband remix of “Inside Out”.

It’s hard to describe The Asteroids Galaxy Tour without implying that they’re aliens who escaped from Planet Sixties and they’re here to retro funk our world. Or maybe it’s just that they’re Danish, which is sort of like being an advanced species from another dimension.

I’ve always been a fan of clever and interesting cover versions of well-known songs. This cover of ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ by The Puppini Sisters will glide you in style past the wise-talking gorilla on the door, straight into the smokey atmosphere of a glamorous Swing Jazz Club from the heady 1930s. Hope you enjoy!

It’s not a song about secret agents (I think), but it’s playful, sassy, and clever, and when I listen to “The Bomb” by Bitter:Sweet, I imagine scenes that would fit very neatly into a quirky spy comedy from the ’50s or ’60s.